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Here is an odd assortment of items for your Wednesday lunch links in this post-Thanksgiving week. It is not exactly shocking news, but Governor Pat McCrory misspoke about education again, this week erroneously claiming that his predecessor never proposed giving teachers a raise, when in fact she did.

The latest gaffe comes in the wake of the weekend column about McCrory’s prickly nature by Charlotte Observer Editorial Page Editor Taylor Batten that still has the political world in Raleigh buzzing.

McCrory responded to the column with a letter to the editor in the Observer today. Here is Gary Pearce’s take on the column and what it says about the hyper-sensitive Gov. Pearce’s piece is appropriately headlined “McCrory under siege.”

You can hear Pearce’s take on McCrory’s first year in office on this week’s News and Views radio show that airs this Sunday on WRAL-FM in Raleigh and other stations across the state. We’ll have a link up Monday.

Media Matters has an interesting post on how North Carolina newspapers often fail to note the conservative funding, much of it from McCrory’s budget director Art Pope, that supports many of the right-wing think tanks they cite in news stories.

Speaking of the folks on the right, The Guardian has a fascinating story about the fundraising woes of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in the wake of the Trayvon Martin case. The paper also has internal documents from ALEC that include the names of some familiar right-wing foundations in North Carolina.

And from a much saner point of view, Diane Ravitch–maybe the most prominent defender of public education—has an interesting reaction to the handwringing over the ranking of the U.S. in the latest round of international test scores.

Finally, today’s musical selection features the amazing and vastly underappreciated soul singer, Bettye LaVette, who will be performing at the Carolina Theatre in Durham January 15th.

Here is LaVette a few years ago with her take on the Rolling Stones song “Salt of the Earth” with its message about workers, families and politicians that seems even more relevant today then when Mick Jagger and Keith Richards wrote it in 1968. Happy humpday.